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Sunday 4 October 2015

Ozymandias

The iambic pentameter is there, albeit without any semblance of octave and sestet pattern.

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away."

Aimed at a statue whose legs are half sunk in the desert sand, it purports to mean the inevitable decline of any leader, however power he is at the moment. The statue is possibly the same that arrived in London in 1821 and was made after Ramesses II, an Egyptian King reputed to be worthy of praise.

Another possible inspiration for Percy Shelly's Ozymandias

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